Mayhew, Lions Pull Rarity: They Play Robin Hood With The Cowboys

Roy Williams is in a better place. And so are the Detroit Lions.

As Black Sabbath once said, black is really white. The moon is just the sun at night.

The little old lady held up the mugger. The 98-pound weakling just kicked sand in the face of the bully.

The Lions fleeced the Dallas Cowboys yesterday. Lions GM Martin Mayhew donned a mask and pointed a gun at Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, telling him to empty his draft wallet. Then he chained Williams to him and fled into the late afternoon.

A trade wasn’t made here; it was committed. Robin Hood took from the rich.

The Lions, led by Mayhew, who’s trying to shed the “interim” from his title, dumped receiver Williams on the Cowboys. For this, the Lions got a first, third, and sixth-round draft choice in next year’s draft.

Jones must be hard up for pass catchers, ironic on the heels of his prized quarterback going down with an injury. Jones overpaid for Williams, the five-year veteran who’s only made the Pro Bowl once, and who is just as likely to drop an easy pass as he is to make the occasional spectacular catch. But then again, you’d overpay too if someone stuck a gun in your back in an alley, which is kind of what happened here, it appears.

This is one of those trades that’s good for all parties involved. Good for Williams, who I think can be a better player in a better environment; good for the Lions, because of their draft booty (they just need to use the picks wisely); and good for the Cowboys — if only because they’ve convinced themselves that it’s good for them.

“Oh, you got me! You got me good!”


Williams was out of place in Detroit, really. He was a brash, loudmouthed boob who didn’t always have the numbers to justify such verbosity. He was always better suited for a team with other loudmouthed boobs, so he could blend in better. In Detroit he was the sore thumb — a decent receiver who often times yapped better than he played.

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In one trade, Martin Mayhew showed more promise as a football executive than Roy Williams showed as a pass catcher in four seasons with the Lions.
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This wasn’t the place for Roy. He was never going to get any better than we already saw. There was no discernible raising of his game. He wasn’t clutch. He wasn’t all that reliable. He fumbled. Williams was more like the Russian Roulette of receivers: once a round he’d come through; the other times, he fired blanks.

What’s even better is that the Lions knew that Williams had no future in Detroit. I believe all the talk of not moving him unless something “interesting” came up was just a bunch of blather. The Cowboys have been wanting Williams, a Texas native, for a couple years now. Mayhew knew the Lions would hear from them before Tuesday’s trade deadline. And he exhibited the patience and savvy of a more veteran GM in this instance. In one trade, Martin Mayhew showed more promise as a football executive than Roy Williams showed as a pass catcher in four seasons with the Lions.

“I wanna be a Cowboy….” (wish granted)


This deal makes Mayhew a sudden player in the Lions’ grand front office search that will be conducted this off-season. He’s still interim, but he’s not as interim as he was 24 hours ago. The thing the Lions need to do is find out whether this trade was a case of beginner’s luck or evidence of a long-term guy in their midst.

Regardless, this was a trade that usually happens to the Lions, not one that they typically make. The Lions are usually the fleeced, not the fleecers. But they did it all to the Cowboys with this one — taking advantage of a team that was clearly dealing from a point of weakness.

Roy Williams is a Dallas Cowboy now. He’s thrilled, and yet I’m not sure he’s any happier than Mayhew and the Lions, who walked away with their trick-or-treat sack bursting at the seams, leaving Jones and the Cowboys on the sidewalk, wondering what hit them, and also asking, “Who WAS that masked man?”

Nashville’s Trotz A Rarity Among Coaches

When the NFL granted the city of Dallas a franchise in 1960, it was the Big D’s second chance at pro football. The first try, the woeful Texans, lasted just one season — 1952. They were the typical expansion football team — a motley crew of other team’s rejects who were prone to stumbling and bumbling and with a fetish for being beaten handily every Sunday. By the midway point of the season, the Texans became wards of the league and didn’t even play any home games. Players’ paychecks bounced like rubber balls with regularity. Yet strangely, several players from that Texans team made up the core of the great Baltimore Colts (the Texans moved to Baltimore in ’53) teams from later in the decade.

So it’s doubtful that the new Dallas team — the Cowboys, they’d be called — made any splash in ’60 with the news that their first head coach would be a young secondary coach from the New York Giants named Tom Landry.

Yet Landry and his fedora would remain on the Cowboys sideline for 29 seasons.

Quick, now — name me the original coach of the Nashville Predators, now in their 9th NHL season. (cue the “Jeopardy” theme)

It’s a trick question, of sorts. Sorry about that.

The man who stands behind the Preds bench today is the same one who did so when the puck was first dropped back in October 1998. None other than Barry Trotz.

Trotz, like Landry before him, is among the most rare of coaches: the leader of an expansion team who survives longer than a couple of wretched seasons.

Of course, I still think Landry’s achievement is more impressive. The Cowboys went 0-11-1 in 1960, and didn’t put together a decent season until 1966, their seventh campaign. The odds against expansion teams in the ’60s and ’70s, in all sports, were terribly skewed. Only in the last 10-20 years have new teams been given more of a fighting chance, with more equitable rules for filling their rosters, and more money to work with to attract free agents.

Still, the fact that Barry Trotz remains the Predators’ only coach in Year Nine is pretty impressive. Certainly more impatient ownership would have found reason to can him sometime in the early 21st century. It’s not like the Predators came out of the womb with 90-point seasons.

Trotz: rarely precedented job security for an expansion coach

But the playoffs are becoming less of a novelty in Nashville lately. This appearance against the Red Wings in Round 1 is the Preds’ fourth straight post-season. Still, they’ve never won a playoff series.

Landry’s Cowboys, by their ninth year, had already won three divisional titles and had played in two championship games. They put it all together and won Super Bowl VI in their 12th season.

Barry Trotz has had highly unusual job security as the coach of an expansion team. But he’d better start winning some playoff series soon. There’s no telling how much more time he’ll buy if his team upsets the Red Wings this month. Heaven forbid.

Not Surprisingly, Lions Can’t Get It Done In Crunch Time

Let’s play a round of Liar’s Club.

Who among you actually thought Dallas Cowboys QB Tony Romo WASN’T going to lead his team to victory in the final drive of yesterday’s game, despite needing 83 yards with 2:15 left and sans timeouts?

Who among you were surprised when Lions linebacker Paris Lenon failed to scoop up a Romo fumble in the final drive?

Who among you actually felt that Jason Hanson’s miss of a 35-yard field goal in the final quarter WOULDN’T come back to haunt the Lions?

If anyone raised their hands to any of the previous questions, then you are a candidate for the Liar’s Club.

The Lions did it to us again yesterday, waiting till there were 18 seconds left to surrender a lead that they held all afternoon in losing to the Cowboys, 28-27 at Ford Field.

Moral victories have been very familiar to Lions players and fans over the years. Often, the “victory” was in simply surviving without getting blown out. Sunday, the moral victory was almost upsetting the 11-1 Cowboys — when another blowout seemed very, very possible.

But the ironic thing is that the Lions were in a position to need a REAL victory in December. In the past, a moral victory might have done the franchise some good in this late stage of the season. But it didn’t get the Lions from 6-6 to 7-6 yesterday, which they so badly needed to do if they have any hope of making the playoffs.

Ahh, the playoffs. Does it really matter, when you stop to think about it? Would anything be accomplished beyond just extending the season by one more week? Let’s play more Liar’s Club. Who thinks the Lions would even win a playoff game, anyway? They certainly wouldn’t get home field advantage. It would smack of the 1999 season, when they started 8-4, finished 8-8, and got smoked in Washington in the first round.

So it’s not really about the playoffs anymore — at least not in the same way. When the Lions were 6-2, the talk wasn’t just about making the playoffs, but of perhaps getting a home game and maybe advancing a round or two. Now, even if by some miracle they win their three remaining games and sneak in at 9-7, winning a postseason game would still be considered a long shot at best.

They can’t cover a kickoff — or a punt — to save their souls, number one. It’s ridiculous how many long returns they’ve given up this season. More irony here, too, for when the Lions were down in the depths, special teams was one aspect of the team that was relatively strong, all the way around. They had good return men, good kicking and punting, and good coverage. It started all the way back in the Wayne Fontes years with coach Frank Gansz, and continued with Chuck Priefer. The new special teams coach, Stan Kwan, must take some blame here. I don’t know what the problem has been, but Kwan may be gone after this season. Kick coverage has been atrocious. Sunday, the Lions were reduced to trying pathetic pooch kicks that they still couldn’t cover, giving the Cowboys the same kind of field position as they were getting when the kicks were deep.

“They made one more play than we did,” DT Corey Redding said as he walked off the field, speaking to Fox 2′s Jennifer Hammond. “We tried our best. But they made one more play than we did.”

“They made one more play than we did.”

It should be put on the Lions franchise’s tombstone.

12th Man Wasn’t The Crowd In ’81 Against Cowboys

It was a loss that irked the late Dallas Cowboys executive Tex Schramm till the day he died, according to some accounts. And it was one of the most zany wins the Lions ever had.

It happened on November 15, 1981, at the Pontiac Silverdome.

The 8-2 Cowboys came to town to face the 4-6 Lions. These were the Cowboys in the heyday of their “America’s Team” label. The Lions were a talented team that was trying to find itself. A few weeks earlier, coach Monte Clark turned to untested rookie QB Eric Hipple in a Monday night home game against the Bears. The Lions started out 2-4 under the leadership of Gary Danielson. In Hipple’s debut, now legendary, he threw for four touchdowns and ran for two more in a 48-17 romp.

On this particular Sunday against the Cowboys, Hipple would have no such heroics. But he did keep the Lions close, and drove the team down the field in the waning moments, the game tied, 24-24.

What happened at the final gun can only be described as controlled chaos.

Watching the game on TV, I couldn’t believe my eyes. In one moment, the Lions had just run a play that failed to get out of bounds. It was fourth down, so spiking the ball was out of the question. The Lions were inside the Cowboys’ 30-yard line. In the next moment, the Lions showing rare late-game smarts, kicker Eddie Murray and the field goal unit were on the field. The clock was ticking down to 0:00.

Somehow, the Lions managed to get set, snap the ball, and get off a kick. The football traveled end-over-end, straight thru the uprights, about 45 yards away. The clock expired when the ball was in the air.

The Lions had won, 27-24.

Later, it was determined that the Lions, in their haste to get the kick team on the field, actually had 12 men on the field when Murray thumped the ball home. The next day, the newspapers ran a photo taken from press box level, going so far as to number the Lions on the field. Sure enough, there were 12.

Schramm, the Cowboys president, was livid. He protested to the league. Not only did the league dismiss the protest, commissioner Pete Rozelle said, “No matter how many Lions were on the field, it was an exciting game, and the 12th man had no bearing on whether the kick was good.”

Zing!

Longtime Cowboys exec Tex Schramm, who died in 2003

Schramm stewed about the loss for a long time. Some say he never really got it out of his system.

The Lions would go on to play the Tampa Bay Bucs on the final Sunday in Pontiac, the NFC Central title squarely on the line. They were 7-0 at home. But the Bucs beat them, as Hipple was intercepted in the end zone during the final drive.

Two years later, Murray would blow a much more famous kick in the NFC playoffs in San Francisco, otherwise known as the “Monte Clark prays” game.

I still think about that ’81 Lions-Cowboys game from time to time. I was watching it in the front room of our fraternity house, the blackout lifted. I can see Murray appearing on the field, out of nowhere — almost as if he’d been there during the play before. It all happened so fast. The Lions ran a play, it was fourth down, and suddenly they were in FG formation. Then they got the ball snapped and the kick was on its way. All in a matter of seconds.

Rarely have the Lions shown such competence.